lifeasdaddy

lifeasdaddy - Leaking from a newspaper

I'm a fan of the Los Angeles Times and especially their roster of sports writers. like many newspapers around the world is suffering a decline in revenue which has apparently been the focus of some internal angst.  A column written about the problem and discussions about some solutions was spike by the managing editor - but then the item was leaked.

Not so easy to kill an interesting story.

pmarca has got excerpts and links to the NYTimes story here.

Bonus:  Link to a great story by one of the best sportswriters in the business, Bill Plaschke about "A Hall of Famer as sweet as his swing" (The link to page 2 of the story seems to be broken, but pages 1 and 3 are up.)

lifeasdaddy - A cherry picker visits our street

Edward enjoyed checking out the cherry picker and the linesman doing some work on the electrical power lines yesterday.

lifeasdaddy - Burlesque in Atlanta.

According to Baby Got Books, there is a thriving burlesque scene in Atlanta.  Burlesque is turning up all over the shop, even at book signings. 

Dita Von Teese has a lot to answer for.

lifeasdaddy - My general impressions of Hawaii

As I mentioned we were in Hawaii a few weeks ago.  I was last there in 1989 and this trip I noticed that there were more Americans vacationing there and fewer Australians than 17 years ago.

Australians now have many more moderately priced vacation options particularly in Asia, so I attribute the decline in Australian tourist numbers to increased competition from other destinations.

Increased American tourist numbers?  Hawaii is so much safer for Americans than other destinations.  It has the benefit of the strict US border controls, and the USA is a country at war.

The USA is a country at war, and the war footing is apparent everywhere on Oahu.  For many decades there has been major Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and Coast Guard bases on Oahu due to it's strategic significance.  Most of these bases are located on the main highways (Eisenhower's National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) so even tourists like us cannot help but to notice them.  As with most communities in the United States, the participation in war is no mere academic distant concept.  It is very real in Hawaii.  There can be few places with such a concentrated and diverse operational military presence.  No doubt for security reasons, few of the military personnel wear uniform off base, however the large numbers of physically fit young males with short haircuts in Honolulu has only one source.

Noticeable too are the many vehicles with stickers on them proclaiming "Support our Troops".  Not something I'd noticed on my last visit to California (post September 11)

Ford Island, part of the National Historic Landmark of the greater Pearl Harbor precinct is undergoing development to provide more military housing.    This construction work is visible while riding the bus from the USS Bowfin visitor center to the USS Missouri. A war machine grinds on.

Picking up some free newspapers around Honolulu, I read about increasing (for want of a better description) Hawaiian nationalism.  It's not something which seems to get much mainstream coverage, but it's a movement which has some similarities to those of other indigenous peoples.  From an Hawaiian nationalist website:

"The cause of Hawaii and independence is larger and dearer than the life of any man connected with it. Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station."
  - Lili`uokalani, Hawaii's last Queen

I'm going to write about eating out on Oahu in another blog post.

lifeasdaddy - Eating out on Oahu, Hawaii

Best meal we had during the trip was at John Domanis.  It was not mentioned in any of the 4 or 5 tourist guidebooks we consulted, but came as a personal recommendation to our friend and dining companion Jean-Marc from a long time resident.

John Domanis has great seafood, attentive service and a nice outlook over the ocean.  It is approached via part of Honolulu's working port, so don't be put off by that.  Valet parking is very reasonably priced too.  Check out the details and typical menus on the restaurant's website here.

Best tourist restaurant experience was at Duke's Waikiki. Duke's Canoe Club Waikiki is located inside the Outrigger Waikiki hotel. This restaurant is mentioned in every tourist guidebook. The food was pretty good, but what you really come here for is the ambience and people watching.  There's the restaurant, then there's the hotel's pool, and then on the other side the most famous beach in the world.  The restaurant is chock full of memorabilia about Duke Kahanamoku, the father of surfing.

HINT: We read that Duke's does not accept reservations for dinner, so early in the afternoon we asked the restaurant hostesses what time they suggested we attend to have the shortest wait for a dinner table.  On that Saturday, they suggested we arrive at 6.15pm, and expect one hour waiting time.  We arrived at 6.00pm and reported to the restaurant reception desk.  They noted our names, and we were advised to come back at 7.10pm.  Returning on time, we had to wait only 5 more minutes to be seated at our table.   The one hour waiting time gave us enough time to go next door to have a cocktail at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel's  Mai Tai  Bar.  Again, one of those quintessential experiences.  Sure it's commercial - but this is Waikiki baby, and money talks.  We had fun drinking our outrageously kitsch cocktails, and the friendly bassist from the bar's jazz trio who was on his break kindly took our group photograph.  (Photo will be posted when it comes to hand.)

DINING WITH CHILDREN ON OAHU

For dinner, the standout for kids is the Pacific Beach Hotel's Oceanarium Restaurant.  The aquarium is huge.  Maybe 6 metres high, and 30 metres long. The photo attached to the restaurant's website gives some scale against the dining tables and chairs.

The restaurant is very busy, and probably has at least 3 seatings per night.This place is obviously a favourite of locals, and there were at least 3 kids' birthday parties.  Not the place for a romantic dinner for two. The tables are generally long, seating 9 or ten people.  Prime tables abut the aquarium tank and the gimmick here is that a diver in the water swims up to the table celebrating a birthday and places a sign against the glass "Happy Birthday Billie".   When the birthday cake comes out for the boy or girl of the moment, 9 or 10 waiters gather around the table and sing Happy Birthday to You.   It's hokey, but the pay off is the ear-to-ear grin of the birthday boy or girl.  If I were 7 or 8 years old, I would think it was the bee's knees.  Bookings essential, and I assume to get one of those prime tables on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night you would need to book weeks ahead.  Gabrielle and I probably got more out of the aquarium aspect than Edward did, but he enjoyed the food, the general hubbub and sense of occasion.

The food is OK for a high volume buffet.  Like Duke's, you don't come here for the food, you come because this ambience is something you can't get anywhere else.

I couldn't take suitable photographs there, but here's some Flickr sets.   There's a nightly Dinner  Buffet, and on the Sunday night we dined the Dim Sum Station was active.

I'm not exactly sure how much  the Oceanarium Restaurant charges for the buffet, but we went with 5 adults and 3 kids under 4 years old, and paid about $35 each for the adults and nothing for the children.  Check their children's prices before you go. Drinks and tax were extra.  A great kids' holiday experience. 

For casual lunch eating with the kids, a standout was the  Poolside Grill at the Marriott Ihilani Resort and Spa.

I mentioned this place when I was writing about beaches for kids, but what I didn't tell you is that less than a metre from our table was a giant pond full of hammerhead sharks.   On the two days that we lunched there, a hotel staff member came around with a group of hotel guests at 11.30am and fed the sharks.  The sharks feeders and guests actually stand in the pond, but are protected from the predators by a small rock wall.  This rock wall also allows the small fish to swim out of the reach of the sharks so there are no disturbing displays of the natural world to bring on tears in the little kids.

The food was tasty and hearty, and reasonably priced for an establishment of this type (read moderately expensive) The bonus is that a spend of more than $25 yields free parking in the resort car park, close to the Ko Olina lagoons where it is otherwise near impossible to park.

Generally, everywhere we went on Oahu children were warmly welcomed.

lifeasdaddy - Overheard at Starbucks.

Jina Moore of the Chrisitan Science Monitor has written an interesting article about conversations, many of a personal nature, which people feel they can conduct in Starbucks coffee houses without care that they will be overheard by others.  These are some of the observations made by Temple University's Professor Bryant Simons who is researching and writing a book about Starbucks.

There's also some interesting sociological insights in this New Yorker snippet about Prof. Simon's research for the book.

Here's a YouTube clip of Prof. Simon lecturing about his Starbucks stuff, especially the brand and how people consume there.  It's a form of self-gifting.  It's a desire for belonging. "Starbucks is a multi-media corporation which stages performances, and puts the consumer at the center of those performances."

lifeasdaddy - Spy squirrels sent on a mission to Iran.

I wrote here about the US Navy's program to train dolphins to defend sea ports against terror attacks.

Now, an unnamed country has released at least 14 spy squirrels on Iran's border.

From the Washington Post:

"A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

"Fixing GPS devices, bugging instruments and advanced cameras in the bodies of trained animals like squirrels, mice, hamsters, etc, are among modern methods of collecting intelligence. Given the fast speed and the special physical features of these animals, they provide special capabilities for spying operations. Once the animals return to their place of origin, the intelligence gathered by them is then offloaded. . . ."

[ tip from pmarca ]

Here's a link to an NPR audio story looking into the matter of spy squirrels.

lifeasdaddy - 55 essential articles every blogger should read.

Matt Huggins has scoured the 'net to bring you these.

[ tip from Joe Wikert ]

lifeasdaddy - Marketing is the new finance.

Hal Varian, has taken up the position of Chief Economist at Google, Inc.  He believes the best and brightest of quantitative economists will drift towards jobs in marketing.

Varian: I think marketing is the new finance. In the 1960s and 1970s [we] got interesting data, and a lot of analytic fire power focused on that data; Bob Merton and Fischer Black, the whole team of people that developed modern finance. So we saw huge gains in understanding performance in the finance industry. I think marketing is in the same place: now we’re getting a lot of really good data, we have tools, we have methods, we have smart people working on it. So my view is the quants are going to move from Wall Street to Madison Avenue.

Read the full Wall Street Journal blog interview here.

lifeasdaddy - What? No Dewey decimal system?

What would your local lending library look like if the books were NOT arranged according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system?

Probably something like this one from Phoenix, Arizona.